Red oak seedlings in Central Park grow up to eight times faster than their cousins cultivated outside the city, probably because of the urban “heat island” effect, Columbia University researchers report . Wade McGillis/ Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Red oak seedlings grew far faster in Central Park than they did in cooler non-urban areas of New York State. The researchers planted seedlings of the native red oak in the spring of 2007 and 2008 in four places: in northeastern Central Park, near 105th Street; in two forest plots in the suburban Hudson Valley; and near the city’s Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskill foothills about 100 miles north of Manhattan. By the end each of summer, the city trees had put on eight times more biomass than those raised outside the city, according to their study , published in the journal Tree Physiology. “The seedlings grew much larger in th...